Forum Moderators: open
Is it related to 'Google Sets' at [labs.google.com...] If so I'm concerned because when I put my key words in there I really get some off the wall words back.
Does it refer to sites or pages that are linked to a site?
Anyway I'd like to hear more about the idea and what it could mean.
Anne
Themes - what's all the talk about? [webmasterworld.com]
Building a Small-Medium Theme Site [webmasterworld.com]
Search Engine Theme Pyramids and Google [webmasterworld.com]
Theming: Is it a Buzzword or is it Real? [webmasterworld.com]
PR versus Themes [webmasterworld.com]
Themes and Popularity - Please Help [webmasterworld.com]
So you might have a site on widgets that has subthemes on "widget maintenance", "grooming your widget", "widget mating habits" etc.
Google's sets seem to be how *they* see different topics relating to each other on the web. Google's sets might give you ideas for subthemes that you hadn't previously considered, but ultimately your site content is up to you. Just because Google thinks "widget" is related to "gadget" (and it does!), it doesn't mean that you have to have anything about gadgets on your site.
I only used her as an example. There were a few other totally out of the blue words there. Actually, I think there could be some promise for Google Sets, provided it doesn't expect people to put in four or five keywords to begin with. Two really ought to be enough to start with.
And thanks for the links, Dante.
I found [searchengineworld.com...]
through one of Dante's links which really helped.
I can see I need to be a lot more careful in how I make sure my themes are obvious to a search engine. I've been going back and making sure my basic key words are sprinkled here and there throughout including in titles, link text, between h1 and 2 tags, in my meta tags, etc. It will be interesting to see if it helps. I suppose I will have to wait a month or so to see though.
Anne
We're looking at themes right here, right in front of us. This Search Engine World section of WebmasterWorld is all about search engines - that's the theme. It's broken down into separate forums - Google, Fast/Lycos, Teoma/Ask, Alta/Ink, etc. But they're all still search engines. All the individual threads and posts are about all kinds of different details, but they still - all of them - relate to search engines.
There's a link in the Yahoo Directory [dir.yahoo.com] that reinforces what the Google News Forum is about - it's a search engines category, it's on theme. It's an authoritative link, reliable because it's from a reputable site and has been verified for accuracy of topic by a human editor.
It's not rocket science, and doesn't need to be mystified or buried in marketing jargon or hype. It's as simple as putting up a spice rack on the wall and putting bottles of thyme, basil, oregano and lemon pepper into it, creating an herbs and spices theme. It's just done with the words. Used throughout a site, as well as the text and context of links pointing to our site and links pointing out, the words we use paint a picture that's visual to bots. Bots can't see a picture, but they can interpret words to know what the picture looks like.
Although Google seems not to be what I would describe as a theme engine, it makes sense to assume that Web searching will become more thematic in the future.
One of the questions about theming has been whether it will be based on domains or just links, I expect Google to use links rather than domains.
I did manage to get the keyword in a few times but it's still not much in terms of keyword density. Luckily it has a good many back links as it's been online since 1996. Maybe that will overcome the lack of keyword density.
The page I am really trying to promote is the homepage of a subdirectory on quilt history but I realized from our discussion here I need to have the overall theme of women's creativity both on the domain home page and the subdomain home page.
I think I'm beginning to catch on to all of this.
Anne
I found a way to use my google bar to get a picture of my theme related words on each page. I've been putting the 5 top words in my google bar search box the clicking on highlight. It gives me a good idea of how well I have scattered these words throughout the document. It's colorful and I'm tired of doing word density searches when I'm not even sure what density I need.
Anne
i don't know what compitition you have, but the idea of theming isn't only about one keyphrase per page distribution under x- amount of site related topics, its about a logical growth formula for a site, in which once you have a winning formula, it wins and wins, and keeps on winning. I hope your looking at other SE's and directories as well.
Actually by far the most of my visitors come directly to my site as I have a lot of repeat visitors plus women tell their friends about the site. So in a way every person who does find my site and really likes it will help bring in more visitors. But of course someone in a given circle of people has to visit first.
I wonder how much word of mouth (or should I say email, message boards and chats) affects where people go on the net.
Anne
word of mouth is massive, its a underlying marketing tool, and it cometh to the good and just, but in regards of SEO-ing your site, google is too narrow minded. There are many forms of traffic, and google is just one of them.
I.E. MSN, Yahoo, Fast (alltheweb), Lycos, teoma (especially if i have detected correctly that you are proscribing female visitors), altavista, and then probably as important as google is well placed reciprocal link site referrals. expand on all channels, not one, putting all your eggs in one basket, can have very bad consequences if they change they're algo which obliterates your listings.
If it can be refined to really work it would be great. Right now I don't think Google Sets is coming close enough and I hate to see everything dependent on one site like Open Directory. What would be great is if they could tell if the sites linking to another site were really related. Can't they do that by simply cross checking key words from linker to linkee?
Anne